A Walk In The Woods

It has been a cold wintry week here in Southern Ontario. Amanda had the 24 hr stomach flu earlier in the week and Dave and I were fighting colds and the kids were getting lethargic hanging around the house all the time. I decided what we needed was to get out and get some fresh air. Amanda ended up going to a friend's house for the afternoon, so we had just Laura and Daniel. We decided to grab some bird seed, get everybody bundled up, load up in the van with Dalwhinnie and hit FWR Dickson Settlement Conservation Area to feed the Chickadees. I took along my camera with the new zoom lens I got for Christmas, hoping to get some good shots of the birds.

A lot of times we haven't had much luck in getting them to come to us to eat, especially when we have Dalwhinnie. She wants to play so she starts barking at them, which causes them to not come near. Today we were lucky, because it was so cold out there really wasn't anybody on the trails, we had the area pretty much to ourselves, and Dalwhinnie kept her mouth shut!!!! The birds were hungry, they were all around us calling each other. I ended up with some really good shots. I set my camera on the sport setting which allows me to take continuous photos while I hold down the shutter. Worked like a charm, I would focus on one child, be it Daniel or Laura, and waited for bird to land and would press the shutter button and hold it down until the bird left. A few of the shots are shown below.

Here is one that landed on Laura's hand. It's like it is deciding which seed to take.

Laura with one of her Chickadees. Laura lucked out today, she pretty much always had a Chickadee on her hand. Her fingers were frozen after a little while, but she wanted to keep feeding them.

I love this one where the Chickadee is looking at Daniel as if asking permission to take some seed. Daniel was thrilled with today, this is the first time a Chickadee has landed on his hand, all the other times before he didn't have the patience to sit still and wait.

This was an afternoon we all needed. We returned home for some hot chocolate and tea, we were frozen by the time we came home, thawed our fingers and toes out and kicked back and relaxed. We all felt recharged and ready to face a new week.